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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24191956">the earth is warmer when you laugh</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinedawns/pseuds/sanguinedawns'>sanguinedawns</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Growing Up, HashiMada Week, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 00:48:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,116</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24191956</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinedawns/pseuds/sanguinedawns</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Madara thinks no amount of bloodshed, no amount of power, can be on par to the thrill he feels when Hashirama’s fingers are buried in the folds of his shirt. When his lips shyly touch his.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Senju Hashirama/Uchiha Madara</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>108</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the earth is warmer when you laugh</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hello. i don't post for a month and then post a ship that's not sns. my apologies. i think it's hashimada week so the prompt for today was bonsai &amp; falconry. i am sorry for the brief mentions of both and for this entirely. i don't write either characters so i won't say i know how to--at least not like sasuke and naruto.</p><p>i hope you all still like it! oh, also, i really only wrote it so my favorite naruto/in general artist can read it. so if you do i hope you enjoy. your hashimada art keeps the fandom alive, legend.</p><p>no beta we die like m*n as usual.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There is a gritty itching under the bed of Madara’s neatly trimmed nails. But the young boy is a little preoccupied to worry about that. Desperately, in a callous manner, he scoops a fist of dirt to press onto the wound perforated of the eyas. The feathers of the callow bird flutter while her breathing slows down, in and out at a lethargic pace because of the shock she has incurred.</p><p>Madara notices how she’s unresponsive. Once more he gathers a fistful of soil, the dampness leaving behind tiny clumps of packed earth on his palm.</p><p>A voice that starts out heavy but peters into a nasally intonation speaks from behind him, startling him similar to the wispy waves of the quiet wind. The intruder doesn’t notice because Madara’s shoulders’ stay steady, “What do you have there?”</p><p>Eyes narrowing into slits, he protectively cradles the small unfledged falcon closer to his chest. He doesn’t answer, but the stance he takes is enough for the other boy’s round-faced features to contort, if only briefly before he’s slipping into an unhindered grin.</p><p>“I’m Hashirama,” he points with his thumb towards the forestry that stretches beyond the river separating Madara’s decrepit village from the neighboring ones. “I see you sometimes! We’ve got—” he stops mid-thought as if he’s not quite sure how to explain it, “From the trees.”</p><p>Madara’s lips purse in hesitation, he slowly extends the hand holding the ruffled creature and explains, “She got hurt. My father gifted her to me to train, but she’s never left her nest until today and there was an accident.”</p><p>The rest is easy to put together.</p><p>“Oh,” Hashirama as he says, has an odd look to him. An unkempt bowl cut and all. As if he’s not necessarily cared for despite his evidently new clothing. Madara lives on the tattered fabrics passed down in his family—clothes are a luxury in the warring period, they rather spend their meager resources on supplies of food and weapons. Thankfully, the weather in this part of the country isn’t ever too cold.</p><p>Without permission, in that childlike curiosity very few kids in his own village possess, Hashirama tumbles closer to him. “Why did you use soil?”</p><p>“Because the earth has healing properties. My mother used to say using it can quickly heal a wound.”</p><p>Smiling kindly, Hashirama pushes out his hands palms upward, “I can help too!”</p><p>“How?”</p><p>“Just trust me.”</p><p>Tajima often chides Izuna for being too trusting, not possessing the critical eye his older brother has, but right now, Madara loses all that prudence. Trading it for help from a strange child, about his age, because the goshawk in his hand is meekly breathing, on the cusp of its primordial death.</p><p>A pulse of chakra conjures from his calloused palms, illuminating the bird, and it takes less than a moment for the animal to flutter awake. The wound isn’t fully closed, the soil Madara had sloppily used still kneaded around the cut, it brings a frown to Hashirama’s comical fresh face, “I’m still learning. But she looks better.”</p><p>The bird sits weakly for a second, Madara uses the time to check on her—the eyes, the head, the breathing, the feathers, and eventually her posture. She eventually falls asleep in his arms, and he frowns too, “The soil will do its job.”</p><p>“Are you saying I didn’t do mine?” Hashirama speaks in offense.</p><p>Madara’s brow draws together in confusion, “All you did was wake her up!”</p><p>Hashirama quickly dissolves into a comical wave of self-pity, “I’m so sorry.” Guilt laps around his features, it’s not that which Madara notices, but instead the ominous dark cloud now over the boy. He waves a hand dismissively, “It’s fine. She’s strong—the strongest of her siblings. She’ll make it.”</p><p>Like quickly changing weather, Hashirama, too, sheds off the disappointment in exchange for smiling really big. Madara sees the chip on his front two teeth. He doesn’t comment though because despite the renowned belief amongst his own clan he isn’t <em>that</em> impolite.</p><p>“So, now what? Are you going to free her?” Hashirama asks.</p><p>“What?” Madara barks, “Are you stupid? I’m going to train her, of course.”</p><p>Hashirama’s face does that weird mix of expressions thing before settling on a huge smile. There is something unnatural how many teeth Madara can see.</p><p>“Oh! Can I watch?”</p><p>That’s how he meets him. At the bank of a river, a few miles south of his worn-down village, the dancing birch trees their only witness.</p><p> </p><p>~</p><p> </p><p>“Why are we planting it on our side and not yours?” Madara testily asks; he’s the one on watch this time. Every so often a twig snaps and his senses go haywire that they’ve been caught. He’s still learning to lie to Tajima, but more importantly, to Izuna. He loves his brother, but he’s too young to know of Madara tempting fate by befriending the boy with the odd haircut, an uncanny lilting twang that reminds of him of people—people his father frowns at the mere mention of—and strange hobbies.</p><p>Very strange hobbies.</p><p>“Where did you find the seeds anyway?” Madara asks.</p><p>Hashirama’s face turns blue, it’s something Madara has learned to read, his face that has a language of its own, “I borrowed them—Aunty Meiko, she’s got a—”</p><p>Madara gawks in flushed surprise, grinning maniacally, “You stole the seeds?”</p><p>Hashirama quacks indignantly, “I said borrowed! I’ll replace them!”</p><p>“That’s stealing,” Madara chastises, but he’s proud. He didn’t think Hashirama had the balls to do be a petty thief to be honest. “Besides, how do you plan on returning them? Once they’ve grown—wait, what is it that you’re growing?”</p><p>The vestiges of remorse and guilt are swiftly replaced by the light in Hashirama’s earth-brown eyes, “Bonsai!”</p><p>“Don’t those take years to grow?”</p><p>“Yeah!” Hashirama exclaims, “We will take care of it.”</p><p>“<em>we</em>?” Madara spits quizzically. “Do you understand that I have never cared after plants?”</p><p>“Ah, but that’s the beauty of nature.” Hashirama opens his mouth, but Madara raises his hand, “Before you impart wise words you’ve heard from that kook lady that takes care of you and your litter of siblings—”</p><p>“Hey!”</p><p>“Uchihas are kin to fire. Life doesn’t grow from our hands; haven’t you been told?” Madara snidely comments, throwing words he’s heard Butsuma use on the battlefield. Tajima never moving an inch of his sword, nor his tongue, to defend the imposition.</p><p>Hashirama either doesn’t recognize his own father’s words or is so aloof he barrels past the jest, “That is false.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Fire isn’t just destruction, just as nature isn’t just life,” Hashirama speaks so fondly of the natural earth like she’s a close friend of his he can’t bear to have slandered. Madara has a quip on his tongue, sparks lighting inside his lungs ready to show him how much fire can burn, but his friend continues, “You know, forests need fire so that the waste is cleared, so the soil is healthy, so—so there is light.”</p><p>Madara listens because he’s found once Hashirama is going there is little he can do to deter him.</p><p>(A part of him thoroughly enjoys the rambles.)</p><p>The weeds grown tall due to the lush summer surround them in thickets, shiver intermittently because of the light breeze, and bow easily next to the curve of Hashirama’s ear. They’re whispering for his attention, but he’s focused on the bag of seeds he had flourished from his pocket.</p><p>He turns now to Madara, placing the seeds into his palm and encourages, “Fire is necessary to life just as much everything else.”</p><p>Madara has the deep embarrassment of flushing at that moment, the open space does nothing to conceal the light pink surfacing his skin. Hashirama mirrors his own image, but along it comes a smile, “So?”</p><p>“It won’t grow,” he’s terribly stubborn, like an aged rock.</p><p>Hashirama cackles delightedly, “And if it does, Madara, you’ll owe me.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Give me the time I’ll figure that out too.”</p><p> </p><p>~</p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>“Father said I am meant to start learning clan business,” Hashirama complained for the nth time. Madara was busy whittling down the piece of wood into a sharp lance. They’re walking down a narrow path towards a forest clearing, the dark-haired teen whistling every so often to have his Goshawk follow him.</p><p>“Why is this a problem?”</p><p>Hashirama frowns as if he expects better from his rival, best friend and confidante, “Because I don’t want to participate in the war.”</p><p>“No, you want to grow trees and herd sheep,” Madara snuffs a laugh, the whistle coming out higher pitched, the bird descends near the clearing, scouting the area. He smacks a light hand over Hashirama’s chest to quiet him, the Goshawk, named Ryo, tailing her prey, “Quiet now.”</p><p>Grumpily Hashirama pouts into silence, lingers over Madara’s shoulder. He’s earned a few inches over the past few years, not enough where their difference is apparent but when he tips his chin to the side it brushes the top of Madara’s ear.</p><p>The prey dawdles towards the shrubbery, it’s a fat hare, brown coat swallowed by fluffs of white over his stomach. He sits on his hind legs, chewing on a berry. Madara extends his gloved hand in front of himself, snapping once, Ryo circles the perimeter, the whip of air startling the rabbit. He runs on the opposite side but Ryo’s fast, talons sinking into the clean hair coating in a fresh berry red. Madara whistles again, a piece of dried meat clutched in-between his fingers.</p><p>Ryo flies onto his forearm, dropping the game onto the ground with a heavy thud, and pecking her rightfully earned prize from his fingers.</p><p>Hashirama is a little green in the face when Madara turns to him, dinner for tonight now secured in his wide jute bag.</p><p>“Don’t you feel bad?”</p><p>Madara thinks Hashirama is too tender-hearted. It affords him ignorance Madara has never acquainted. Because even at the young age of sixteen he doesn’t understand how someone so close to war can dream so idealistically.</p><p>“We have to eat. So, it’s either this or starving,” Madara tallies the conversation they’ve repeated over the same subject over the years. “Besides, if you maybe did as your father said and helped end the war, I’d consider your plant diet.”</p><p>“You’re making fun of me,” Hashirama points out. “I know when you do that, Madara.”</p><p>“Then don’t give me a reason.”</p><p>Hashirama quiets. He speaks once again when they make it out to their hidden alcove, far from prying eyes of either of their families, “Once I’m clan leader, I want the Senju and Uchiha to get along.”</p><p>“How would you do that?”</p><p>He looks at him like he’s the stupid one now. “We’ll do it together!” he claims, Kawarama’s grave hasn’t even warmed yet, “Because you’ll lead the Uchiha.”</p><p>“And then what?”</p><p>Hashirama shares, a private joke, that sounds like a promise, “Then we’ll live on a farm with the sheep.”</p><p>“The sheep.” Madara repeats.</p><p>“Yes, you, me, Ryo, and the sheep.”</p><p>Madara laughs.</p><p> </p><p>~</p><p> </p><p>Time is bound to no one. Kind to no one.</p><p>It passes in waves, sometimes slow, building in layers, other times fast and careless. Stepping over the feet of its spectators. Not an ounce of worry about the damage it leaves behind.</p><p>But it’s the summer before Madara turns eighteen. He’s at the cusp of adulthood and yet he feels as he’s lived a thousand years already. The people of his clan dwindle at a merciless pace, his father’s crow’s feet sinking deeper than Ryo’s talons. Izuna asks him of his outings—albeit their frequency far and few now—and he lies like a seasoned champion.</p><p><em>Training</em>. <em>Falconry</em>. <em>Foraging for medicine</em>.</p><p>They stack in heaps. Their burden though diminishes at one sight, and one sight only.</p><p>Hashirama gracefully steps over the stalks of weed spouted from the soil, it’s not wrong to say they bow away to clear a path for him, to steal a glance of him. Madara feels a little like the trees, the flowers, the earth, succumbing to Hashirama’s simple presence.</p><p>War is at its worst. Blood stains every tent of his dilapidated village. But he’s eighteen you see, he’s latched onto that hopeful idealism Hashirama sings about, and his heart is in a ditzy.</p><p>It beats. Once, twice, <em>oh dear</em> it skips the third time.</p><p>Long, luscious black hair falls over his shoulder, Hashirama’s checkered haori carrying rustic colors of the coming autumn. He speaks in that newly acquired deep timbre, no longer fighting against his nasally pitch, “You came.”</p><p>“You asked,” Madara doesn’t say the rest, <em>I’ll always come</em>.</p><p>Hashirama seems to understand anyway, closing the distance between them, noticing the glove covering Madara’s left hand. “Ryo?”</p><p>He pursues his lips to whistle, Hashirama tilts his chin up, watches the bird circling them over the forest clearing. The stretch of his neck shows the soft brown of Hashirama’s skin, it complements the colors of his attire.</p><p>“Shall we?” Madara propositions.</p><p>Madara has an uncle who is a brute. His sword has seen more slashed throats than Madara can count. At dinner when they all sit together, he talks about the power he feels standing next to a lifeless body, how nothing matches the thrill of having so much control over human life. A simple slice to the throat. That’s all.</p><p>Madara thinks no amount of bloodshed, no amount of power, can be on par to the thrill he feels when Hashirama’s fingers are buried in the folds of his shirt. When his lips shyly touch his.</p><p>Hashirama draws away before he gets the chance to push back, “I missed you.”</p><p>It’s been three some months since they last saw each other. The bonsai tree has begun to sprout taking delicate steps similar to them.</p><p>“I sure hope so,” Madara’s nose in the air, it’s Hashirama prominent frown that squeezes out an honest, “<em>I missed you as well</em>.”</p><p>They kiss under the shade of a full tree, the leaves serving their purpose in shrouding them from the rest of the world. Madara loves it like this. Separate from the rest of the world. Right here, only him and Hashirama. <em>His </em>Hashirama.</p><p>Hashirama doesn't let up for air, they compete in this too. Unlike any other time, Madara's who has lungs that carry the heat his family has carefully curated over generations, that expand at his will and contract when he deems. The flushed picture painting Hashirama pleases Madara immensely, the other man fruitlessly burying a complaint to say instead. The apple of his cheeks pronounced, "One more."</p><p>It's Hashirama's laugh that breathes itself into his mouth that lights his core, warms the earth, and all her greenery. It's what Madara renders himself to; Hashirama, this forest alcove, their tender affections. </p><p>They’re careless, they’re lost, they’re at the cusp of love. They have a friendship forged by fire and the earth, but the love that is burgeoning is still a bud begging permission to blossom.</p><p>Tobriama catches them like that, fingers tangled in dark hair, Madara’s rougher strands unclipped by Hashirama’s deft fingers, their mouth stained the color of strawberries.</p><p>Hashirama lets go first, stepping away but keeping close. Tobirama’s eyes have accusations lancing them but not in his brother’s direction. They’ve always been colder than Hashirama’s molten browns.</p><p>Madara doesn’t see Hashirama thereon. Senju’s become relentless in their miserable attacks. His heart learns to suffer through a unique loneliness. His goshawk escapes him one evening, slipping from his fingers she heads north, and Madara finds loss in that companionship too.</p><p> </p><p>~</p><p>Izuna’s death destroys more than the fading semblance of a family he had known. Comes with it grief Madara doesn’t ever truly learns to work with. War wages and Tajima dies as does Butsuma.</p><p>Hashirama proposes peace. All that lingers like needles digging behind the lids of Madara’s bleeding red eyes is Izuna’s pierced skin and all too soon goodbye. So, he fights.</p><p>Every time he takes to using hands that held Hashirama’s soft, flowing dark hair, to pinch skin and break flesh, the sprout of hope wilts. It doesn’t even get the chance to become more, not a tree, not a fully realized being. It’s left in that juvenile stage that ceaselessly slips through his grasp and eventually Madara can’t even remember what had planted it in the first place.</p><p>Madara feels the sun on his back, filtering through the gaps between the birch, the bonsai is taller than before, unkempt and fluttering proudly.</p><p>“Would you look at that,” Madara muses. His father passed away six years ago. Izuna has been gone for even more years now. Touching the thick bark, he feels the wood beneath his palm, “It did grow.”</p><p>Hashirama met him a week ago.</p><p>He returned Ryo. She had flown to him. Perhaps that was a keepsake. Madara with Hashirama’s bonsai. Hashirama with Madara’s favorite goshawk.</p><p>He said he’d give his life for the future. For Madara.</p><p>Madara couldn’t open his mouth then to say he never asked. Not for this life nor for someone else’s. Shouldn’t his old friend know by now of the importance of it? How the little old thing is fickle and not to be offered so callously?</p><p>But Hashirama has always been profound gestures and bigger words. Peace was over the horizon, no longer staring at them at a distance in a mocking fashion, it’s close by tantalizing the vows of friendship.</p><p>He pats down the bark one more time, thinks of Mito Uzumaki’s braids winding to the small of her back.</p><p>Sometimes he finds himself thinking if things would be different if he had relented earlier on. Given the chance would he go back and seize the ghost of vengeance by the throat and squash it so he can look forward to a better end. A life with promise and happiness. That maybe he could’ve found that if he was more forgiving.</p><p>But then he thinks of Hashirama and his hope. He thinks of the people he wants to keep together at the cost of those who can’t say more. He thinks of the Uchiha pushed to admit a compromise and he thinks of Tobirama’s palpable deceit.</p><p>Madara sighs, “He was right of this too.”</p><p>The tree dances in the summer light, the leaves that were never trimmed preen, and Madara realizes even if a lot was lost, this will always remain. Seasons will change, time will run away, Ryo will eventually pass on too. But this place, the memories buried here and all that came along with it will remain.</p><p> </p><p>He smiles, leaving the bonsai in the compound that no longer exists, journeying to the city past the hidden leaves.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>~</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>comments kudos and all that jazz.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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